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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27560956">Blank Space</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda'>Glinda</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Leverage, Person of Interest (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Case Fic, Community: intoabar, Con Artists, Crossovers &amp; Fandom Fusions, Friendship, Gen, Teamwork</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:26:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,644</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27560956</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The number on the board that morning belonged to a young woman named Alice White. That wasn't her real name, but they didn't know that yet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Blank Space</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I started writing this for intoabar back in May/June time? And then my laptop died, I thought most of this fic was lost to the ether, but then I found a draft in my gdocs and was able to resurrect it. Better late than never:</p><p>Parker goes into a bar and meets... John Reese</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The number on the board that morning belonged to a young woman named Alice White. The brief Harold had given him, was the kind of young woman that most people wouldn’t look at twice, in New York for a few weeks, but normally resident in Portland. At least these days she was resident in Portland, but Harold had found traces of her in LA and Chicago, Kentucky and Montana, and in all sorts of unlikely places around Massachusetts. Not surprising in someone working in sales, but her career history is…interesting. Lots of PA jobs – often for companies whose CEOs went down for fraud or on corruption charges – some event management, the usual mixture of retail and bar work, even a cub reporter role.</p><p>In person though, Alice White isn’t anything like John was expecting, sure she could be charming with a laugh that lit up the room and drew everyone’s eye, but when she wasn’t ‘on’ she could disappear completely not just in a crowd but in an almost empty room. People seem to both instinctively confide in her, and also completely forget she was there a moment later. John knew intelligence agents who would have given their right arm for that level of skill. She’s slim and blonde, a waif-like white girl, sweet and charming, but the moment she’s alone her stride lengthened and her expression lost its ditzy lost look. Given her previously peripatetic lifestyle, Harold suggests that perhaps she has found it useful to appear unthreatening and vulnerable, while being actually much tougher and more practical below the surface. John can hear the faint edge of admiration in Harold’s voice when he talks about Alice. Her likes her, John can tell, empathises with someone who presents different faces to the world in order to keep herself safe. Thinking about how different the people Harold has been to each of the people he’s loved – to Grace, to young Will – over the years, makes something ache somewhere under John’s ribs. </p><p>For a while though, John wonders if Alice is the perp rather than the victim. Watching how she is with the other delegates at the trade show, the way she puts on and discards different personalities for different people – sometimes subtly different, others dramatically, but all designed to wind the other person around her little finger.  (Fight, flight, faun, Harold reminds him, just because someone’s managed to turn the results of their trauma into an advantage, doesn’t make them a con artist.) But the trade show is full of sharks, sales guys and CEOs, many of them awful people with terrible secrets, any one of a number of slimy men in expensive suits and massive entitlement complexes could take a shine to that young woman and prove to be a threat. </p><p>There’s someone else following Alice. Another professional, though his disguises are much more natural and ad hoc, he fully commits to each differing role. It takes John a while to recognise the other man, but when he does his blood runs cold, and he’s utterly certain that this man is the danger to Alice. Eliot Spencer is a very dangerous man, they’ve not had any professional crossover but John knows him by reputation. He’d presumed when the man had dropped off the map it was for reasons similar to his own. But the more John watches the less things make sense. Spencer is watching Alice, but that doesn’t seem to be the purpose of his subterfuge, he’s watching other people, leaving things in particular places and collecting things from other places. Perhaps, John thinks, Alice is merely collateral damage, maybe she’s going to discover what he’s up to, or reveal Spencer’s con or identity to the wrong person. It may be a crime of necessity – fate intertwining two unrelated people with increasing inevitability - rather than actively premeditated intent.</p><p>(Harold on the other hand, is playing cat and mouse with another hacker. He pretends to be annoyed, but John isn’t fooled, Harold hasn’t encountered an actual challenge in ages, he’s having the time of his life.)</p><p>John sits at a corner table, where he can see the entire bar, it’ll be busy later, but right now there are just a few regulars propping up the bar, and few couples scattered around the place, sharing a quiet afternoon drink. It’s unsurprising when Alice walks into the bar; she’s been meeting a handsome young African-American man here for lunch most days. This isn’t her usual arrival time. More importantly though, the woman that walks through the door isn’t Alice White. Oh, that’s Alice’s face, but the expression, the body language; the whole way of being is different. Grifter, John realises belatedly, he was right, he’s seen colleagues who’ve been in deep cover for months slough off a no longer required identity with less completeness. She strides straight across the bar to his table, not even giving the pretence of looking around; she is absolutely not playing here. </p><p>She cuts through his prevarication and deflection with razor-sharp clarity, this is not the work of a run of the mill grifter, come up on their wits, fast-talking and knowing how to play the odds to their advantage. Her 'real' name is Parker - "the jewel thief?" Harold exclaims in his ear - and she is very much not any kind of lone wolf any more. She is a mastermind with a plan, and a crew, and she might destroy him if he gets in her way. John has to do some very fast talking when her boys appear at her call, cover identities sloughed off; suddenly cold and tough and very much at her command. If Harold hadn't found conclusive evidence that she was definitely the prospective victim here, John would be utterly certain that she was the perp, the one who gave the order, even if she didn't ultimately carry out the actual crime. In the end he has not choice, he has to tell her the truth about who he is and what he's going, at least as much of the truth as it's safe to tell her. It's the only way to both reassure her, that he's not the threat, and convince her that they need to work together to find the real threat. </p><p>The really dangerous part is that Hardison knows about The Machine. That he has for years kept a watchful eye on the project as it developed, half fascinated, half horrified. (He can't decide if it's more or less creepy than that spy truck in Washington, given that the Machine only talks back in code rather than in sentences.) Given how nosy he is, it’s amazing that he’s yet to ask the wrong question, of the wrong person and disappear. As the teams get to know each other it becomes obvious that it's less luck or even skill that's kept Hardison from drawing ire in regard to his interest in the Machine. It's more that as a team their interests and concerns are juggling too many other secrets and lies, conspiracies and corruption scandals for any one of them to become the kind of obsession that draws the wrong kind of notice. They have files with intelligence services and crime prevention agencies across North America and Europe - and Hardison and Parker's long established FBI covers prove very useful to the case - but they've not managed to annoy any one organisation enough to be worth singling out. Steadily, it becomes clear that someone is after what Leverage knows, but not what they know about the Machine. </p><p>Leverage have the black book. They stole the black book from the Interpol servers, literally sneaked into the server room of one of the highest security buildings in the country and stole a chunk of the cloud to do so. They’re essentially using it as a to-do list of marks to work over in their own special way. Harold is equal parts horrified and delighted by their exploits. John thinks he’d like to go drinking with Spencer.</p><p>It's Parker he ends up spending most time with though, the guys they're up against know Spencer, his MO, his physical strengths and weaknesses and they think that Parker is their best pressure point to bring the other two into line. They don't know John from Adam - which is why Hardison gives him the cover name of John Adams, he can't resist poking fun at their enemies - so Spencer keeps close to Hardison - and the pair of them keep a weather eye on Harold, making sure they aren't displacing attention in the wrong direction. While John squires Parker around town, playing the handsome but not-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is mark right up until the moment they can - almost literally - drop consequences on their enemies heads.  </p><p>“You do what we do”, Parker tells him afterwards, with any easy shrug, “different methodology, same basic cause.“</p><p>Parker, when she isn’t wearing Alice White, or any of her other alter egos, is clear-eyed and highly observant, ruthless yet compassionate and highly competent. She likes her cocktails sweet and chocolaty and her beers to the sourer end of the craft spectrum, picks pockets and locks almost subconsciously, and is always, always watching her team's back. She’s also highly eccentric and weighs every word carefully, as though she had to learn to understand human interaction like an alien, and can see clearly past his public mask. It takes him a while to understand that she is trying to put him at ease, letting her own rough edges show through to put him at his ease about his own.</p><p>“Sometimes,” Parker replies gently when he demurs, “bad guys are the only good guys you get. Sometimes we’re the best qualified for the job.”</p><p>Perhaps that really is what they have in common, the self-awareness of their ability to do great harm, and the choosing, time and again, to do good instead.</p>
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